This will enhance the overall look of the sim tremendously.

https://www.aurorasimulations.com/products/buildingshd

 

Thought it was an alternative to the BuildingsHD being designed by ORBX at first then I noticed it is the same thing; been anticipating this for whats felt a few years now so be good if it does come out before the end of 2019

The buildings look amazing, no question about that, but I would have to think that depending on your system specs, this is something that has the potential to be hard on performance.

I realize the advertising blurb says "Performance-optimized" but in general there's no free lunch performance wise when it comes to these ultra high resolution add ons. 

Well, we already have something similar: FTX Trees HD. And this addon indeed improved performance a little bit compared to the default tree textures. So I am still optimistic that the same will be true for improved building textures.

Ah, yes. The famous Buildings HD vaporware. Buildings in real life get built faster than the ones in this add-on. It's a daunting task to update all the building textures to high resolution texture sheets given how many default building types exist.

18 hours ago, AnkH said:

Well, we already have something similar: FTX Trees HD. And this addon indeed improved performance a little bit compared to the default tree textures. So I am still optimistic that the same will be true for improved building textures.

Let's hope the best. I also hope that the problem of floating building (mostly in mountainous area) would be addressed. But I am afraid that this cannot be cured by a better autogen design.

10 minutes ago, Nemo said:

But I am afraid that this cannot be cured by a better autogen design.

It most certainly can't as it is a flaw in the terrain render engine and not in the texture rendering.

I keep autogen buildings at medium and trees high. The buildings look like Monopoly game block houses and I hate to taxi my 747 to the departure end, and hold short with the wing over some one's front yard. Then there's the performance hit. If all that can be improved bring it on.

Good idea but I feel it really should've been bundled in with ORBX Global textures

Low resolution textures are not the only problem with default autogen buildings. Plonking them down on generic repetitive texture blocks is what makes them look unrealistic. No amount of face paint is going to solve that little problem.

It is interesting as a comparative observation that XP11 also has a rework of autogen buildings coming soon and there is a huge difference in the aesthetic appeal of one over the other (based more on the placement of the autogen and the texture work under it)  Although this release for P3D will be of huge benefit, the scaling (and placement) is ultimately still the elephant in the room - a limitation of the sim, not the developer.

Edited March 20, 20197 yr by ErichB

Autogen building height is exaggerated, single story houses are the size of warehouses!

Edited March 20, 20197 yr by MatthewS

22 hours ago, Farlis said:

It most certainly can't as it is a flaw in the terrain render engine and not in the texture rendering.

If only they had a basement/foundation section of the texture, which could be repeated and extended to ground level, then no more floating buildings.

Buildings that "stick out" on steep slopes are one of the most annoying scenery problems for me. Like Matthew says, a simple "foundation" that extends to the lower slope would effectively solve the issue.

What you suggest is basically a forced and intentional texture clipping. I am not sure that this would not result in other unwanted effects such as bleeding through textures and clipping artefacts. Besides that, this would most probably lead to issues when building shadows are activated, unless the "foundation" does not cast a shadow (which would result in strange shadows). Means: not that easy as it sounds...